Carrot cultivation presents various challenges

The first Peenacademie, organized by Delphy, started on Tuesday 30 January. Niek Vedelaar, cultivation advisor at Delphy, discussed the figures for carrot cultivation during the meeting. "65.000 hectares of carrots have been grown, spread over 900 companies." He emphasizes that now that the practical research has disappeared, growers have to get to work themselves. That brings challenges.

According to Vedelaar, it is important for the market that fewer emissions are found on the carrot and that the carrot remains under the environmental label. "This is a requirement, especially at the supermarkets," says Vedelaar. Growers showed that the carrot market is currently mainly a supply market. However, this is an offer of poor quality. Growers expect that good quality can still be found, but that they are still waiting to be sold.

Innovation in the sector
Marc Versprille, also a cultivation advisor at Delphy, mainly focused on innovations in carrot cultivation. "In Denmark, paper sowing is used on a large scale, which can give the advantage of a more even emergence and less hand weeding times. Perhaps that is also something for here." In addition, Versprille looked ahead to the coming season. "Because the winter period was mainly wet, there is a chance that the leaching of nutrients is high."

Storage remains important
The storage of carrots is also important, says an adviser from Dijksma Koudetechniek. "Growers who use the old storage technique in particular can have a problem in the short term. This is because certain refrigerants become more and more expensive in the short term, or even become unavailable at all. This is partly due to legislation." In addition, the adviser stated that a slightly lower level of storage can yield a considerably lower return.

Harry de With, purchasing advisor at Hagranop, also briefly discussed the storage. He explained a simple storability test, where carrots are plagued under poor storage conditions. "If that carrot starts to show quality problems, the batch that has been stored under good storage conditions has to go."

Anne-Jan Doorn

Anne Jan Doorn is an arable expert at Boerenbusiness. He writes about the various arable farming markets and also focuses on the land and energy market.

aj.doorn@boerenbusiness. Nl

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